Quotes About Wisdom

Since I would rather make of him [the child] an able man than a learned man, I would also urge that care be taken to choose a guide [tutor] with a well-made rather than a well-filled head.

He who would teach men to die would teach them to live.

I put forward formless and unresolved notions, as do those who publish doubtful questions to debate in the schools, not to establish the truth but to seek it.

I speak the truth, not my fill of it, but as much as I dare speak; and I dare to do so a little more as I grow old.

This notion [skepticism] is more clearly understood by asking "What do I know?"

Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.

There is no desire more natural than the desire for knowledge.

Our wisdom and deliberation for the most part follow the lead of chance.

My trade and art is to live.

A man of understanding has lost nothing, if he has himself.

My trade and my art is living.

In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page- boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk - they are all part of the curriculum.

Let us a little permit Nature to take her own way; she better understands her own Affairs than we.

For truth itself does not have the privilege to be employed at any time and in every way; its use, noble as it is, has its circumscriptions and limits.

The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.

Learned we may be with another man's learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own.

I am afraid that our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, and that we have more curiosity than understanding. We grasp at everything, but catch nothing except wind.

There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.

Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.

I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.

Let us give Nature a chance; she knows her business better than we do.

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, inquiry the progress, ignorance the end.

He who would teach men to die would at the same time teach them to live.